


keep it low (like a secret code)

by shuofthewind



Series: The Making of Monsters [SIDEFICS] [3]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Darcy Never Met Jane, Companion Piece, Darcy Is Allergic To Feels, Foggy Is Done With This Shit (Except Not Really Because They'd All Fall Without Him), Foggy Nelson Is a Good Bro, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Long-Suffering Foggy, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 08:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4780841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seriously, there are times when all Foggy wants to do in life is bash them around the head with a baseball bat, because this is getting ridiculous. </p><p>[Or, the one where Foggy's stuck with a pair of blind, pining idiots as best friends. Oh, and one of them can't, you know. Actually see.]</p><p>[<em>The Price of War</em> 'verse. Companion piece. Foggy POV. Oneshot.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	keep it low (like a secret code)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [hear all these words (it breaks my heart)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4752377) by [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings). 



> ...poor Foggy.
> 
> SPOILERS FOR _THE PRICE OF WAR_ , TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T READ IT. 
> 
> Ummmm, for trigger warnings: some self-confidence issues, lying to friends, and...basically some references to shit that goes down in TPoW? If you read TPoW none of this is unfamiliar. And if you haven't, _you will understand nothing._
> 
> All hail the DorkChildren Idiocy.
> 
> Unbeta'ed. Title from "Love Lockdown," by Kanye West, covered by Glass Animals.

The thing is, Foggy knows pining when he sees it. When you have three sisters (all older, and if you think that sounds like it would be utter hell, then you would be right times about a google. Or five.) who all look, essentially, like they’ve walked off some sort of official TV or movie set, you learn what pining looks like real damn fast.

It was the worst with Monny (Monica hated her name from the moment she was able to understand it _was_ her name, according to their parents), which took people by surprised sometimes because Monny was the one who never seemed to give a shit. Still, Monny was, is, and will probably remain the single most oblivious person Foggy has ever known, including his two best friends. She also has a talent for befriending girls who think she walks on water, and never actually notices that if she wanted, she could have an entire army of fencing badasses willing to cater to her every whim, both sexual and spiritual.

Anyway, Foggy knows what pining looks like. You would have to pay him a very large amount of money to pretend that he didn’t. (At this point, he _should_ be getting paid, to be honest.) And even though it takes him a little while to figure it out, it’s pretty fucking obvious after like six months (and later he’s disappointed in himself that it took that long because they’re _obvious_. Not unless you know them. But if you do, like he likes to think he does, then _goddamn,_ they’re obvious.) that through some equally fantastic and horrifying meanderings of fate, he has become Harry James Potter.

That sounds weird. The parallel isn’t exact, obviously. He doesn’t have an arch-nemesis trying to kill him (unless Marci counts, which brings up a whole kettle of fish about Voldemort that he doesn’t want to touch), he’s not a wizard (that _broke him_ as a child, you don’t want to know), and he can’t fly a broomstick (and even if he could, he’s pretty sure he’d throw up anyway, because, heights) but at the same time he’s caught in the middle of two people who are so stupidly head over heels for each other that it’s actually physically painful, and _neither of them will do anything about it._

It’s actually easier to figure out Matt than it is to figure out Darcy, especially at first. It’s still damn hard, because Matt is possibly one of the most emotionally shielded people he’s met in his life, for reasons that Foggy won’t even try to sort out. (After the bombings, after Fisk, it makes far more sense, but back then it’s just that Matt doesn’t like to talk about things, and that’s okay, whatever, he’s an awesome friend anyway and Foggy will _fight you._ ) He’s not certain that Matt’s even aware of it himself, not for a long time. But there’s—it’s really hard to define, especially since at first when Darcy starts hanging out with them there’s the whole _I drunkenly made out with my roommate’s study buddy at a party one time_ swamp to wade through (which is gross, especially looking back). Even in the beginning, there was…something. Like a pause when something ought to be said but isn’t, or when you know you’ve forgotten something but for the life of you, you have no fucking clue what it was.

It doesn’t really connect in his head until he walks into one of their library haunts one day (they stake out couches like velociraptors guarding territory) to find Darcy sitting cross-ways with her back against the arm of the chair, shoes off, hair pinned up with a pencil and her feet tucked under Matt’s thigh. They’re sitting so nonchalantly that it looks entirely natural to anyone who passes by—except, you know, for Foggy, because Foggy _lives with Matt._ They’re roommates, they sleep the same goddamn thirteen-by-ten box, and all through first semester Foggy had always felt awkward doing the bro-hug thing with Matt because he’d always flinch, or get really stiff, like he wasn’t used to people touching him so casually. He’s getting better (Foggy doubts that with friends like him and Darcy, Matt will do anything other than sink or swim, because both of them are very touchy people) but there’s always this odd hint to his expression, like he’s waiting for someone to let go, or back away, or back _off_.

Here, though, it’s—it’s not reciprocated, exactly, it’s definitely Darcy invading Matt’s space and not the other way around, but he doesn’t seem _bothered_ by it. Which, to Foggy, is what makes the difference. Matt tenses when _anyone_ touches him, including Foggy, even if it’s only for an instant, and that tension carries over to every moment he’s being touched. But this time, with Darcy, he doesn’t even seem to notice. And after, when he starts paying attention, Foggy realizes that even if Matt always _jumps_ when Darcy touches him unexpectedly, he never _flinches_. He never tries to get away from her, and when she yanks him around it’s like a satellite following a planet. He exists in her space, though she doesn’t quite exist in his.

Okay, weird metaphors. It’s food for thought, that’s all he’s saying.

He starts trying to keep track of the weirdness level, after. It’s not like he spends all his time stalking his best friends trying to figure out if they _like-_ like each other (though some days, especially after Elektra, he’s tempted to just—lock them somewhere, and have them work it out), it’s—it’s self-preservation partially, because he’s legitimately not sure if he can exist properly as a human being without either of them, but it’s also because they’re his best friends, he wants them to be happy, and it would be really, really awesome if it turns out that he’s not completely nuts and imagining things that aren’t there. And again, it’s hard for a while, because if Matt’s a master at hiding emotions, then Darcy’s the queen of covering them up with other ones, and that’s possibly worse.

(He can remember one time in undergrad when she falls asleep on the sleeping bag she keeps in their room, because their respective dorms are across campus from each other and sometimes when she stays until late studying with them she doesn’t want to walk back, for obvious reasons, and he rolled over at three in the morning to find her awake, her eyes glassy, breathing fast like she’d just finished a marathon. And she hadn’t looked like Darcy, in that moment. She’d looked like some of her skin had been peeled away, and there was someone else, frightened and furious, hiding underneath.

Then she’d caught him looking, and the expression was gone. She’d blinked at him and said, “Nightmare,” and since the transformation was so smooth, and her half-unsettled, half-embarrassed smile so genuine, he hadn’t questioned it.

He sees that same look later, when she’s broken, her arm wrapped and her face bruised and curled up around one of Matt’s pillows like it’s holding her steady, the shaking in her voice when she says _I didn’t want you to hate me_ , and he curses himself for being so stupid—)

Back on track. Matt hides. Darcy disguises. The difference is subtle, but it’s there, which means that when he finally learns enough about Matt to be able to pick up the cues—he gets very still, when he’s thinking about how to phrase something, or he cocks his head a certain way or pauses before speaking, like he does when he’s cold-called in Civ Pro and he’s thinking very, very fast—he’s only just starting to figure out when the hell Darcy is dissembling, and when she’s being genuine. Because a good 98% of the time she’s _being_ genuine. The girl can lie like hot damn, fireman—the stories she makes up for professors are actually priceless— but she never really sees the need to. She just doesn’t talk about things, if she’s not comfortable, and that’s when you know to back off. (Though sometimes Foggy pushes, because she needs the push, she _needs_ to be pushed, because otherwise she’ll just let it suffocate her, and she rages at him for it but it almost always comes out okay, in the end.)

The fact that Darcy doesn’t lie actually helps, in a way, because if she doesn’t lie, she just doesn’t say anything. She just gives you this _look_ over the top of her glasses that she probably picked up from Jen Walters, because it’s scary as shit and promises dire consequences, but at least then you know you’ve hit a nerve. So that’s useful, at least. It means that when he fucks up (or when he’s groping for an answer and he’s getting close to the truth) he at least has a visual clue as to when to run the fuck away.

When it comes to her and Matt, though, it’s different. She doesn’t communicate through visual cues with him, for obvious reasons. She just touches him, and _that’s_ the real revelation, for Foggy, at least. Darcy really, really likes touching. She’s the most tactile person in the universe, so far as Foggy’s concerned. She likes people touching her, as long as she invites it, and she loves expressing herself _through_ touch, which…also sounds super weird because it seems like a sex thing, but it’s more like how she talks without talking. If she’s happy with you, she’ll pat your back or your head or hug you. If she’s grumpy, she’ll nudge you around, get right up in your face, poke you and prod you and shift you like you’re in her way even when you try to stay out of it. If she’s content, she just kind of settles in like a happy cat, curled up and fluffy, and whines until someone pets her head. It’s just something she _does_ , and she’s doesn’t seem to favor one of them over the other at all, especially not at the beginning. But with Matt, it’s different, ever so slightly. They both _have_ to touch Matt, Foggy and Darcy (or they think they do), just so he knows where they are in space, so he knows they’re passing, but sometimes Darcy will just kind of—leave her hand behind. Like she’s grounding herself, somehow. She never does it for very long, and again, she touches _everyone_ , so at times it’s difficult to tell the difference, but he knows he’s not imagining it.

(Once he finds them with her leaning over him to watch him reading Braille, and her hand’s on his shoulder for no particular reason, her hair swinging forward to just barely brush the desk. Matt turns his face up to hers to explain something. and when she turns to meet him Foggy sees this _look_ on her, not on her face but in her stance. She’s so fucking soft, and he realizes all at once _holy shit, holy shit, holy shit_ , because _soft_ is the only word that can really describe it properly, and even then it barely even starts to cover all the powerful and terrible feelings that he’s seeing in her right now, in _both_ of them right now, and _holy shit when did that happen and how did I not realize it from the start?_

That image of them sticks in his head, orange light from bay windows and shadows over their faces like it’s some kind of painting, the silhouettes of glasses and noses, and when he thinks of them—not of Darcy and of Matt but of Darcy-and-Matt—that’s what always comes back first.)

He’s actually a little weirded out by how often he notices it, after that. The touching thing. And the space thing. And the getting _into_ each other’s space thing. Matt dates and Darcy dates and neither seem particularly bothered by the other one doing it, but at the same time if they’re in the same room, it’s like a rubber band draws them back and forth, always keeping them in the same orbit. Not even a _physical_ orbit, but just—conversational. Emotional. They can only go so long without snapping back together again no matter which direction they’re pulled in. Some part of him is a bit jealous of that. It’s as if they have this instinctive knowledge that if one reaches out, the other will be there, and he wishes he had the confidence to feel that way. Not just about _someone_ , but about—anyone, really. There’s some tiny space inside him that makes him wonder if he really has any point at all in this friendship, and it always makes him sad.

(Foggy doesn’t really realize how long he holds onto that idea until he’s standing in Claire Temple’s apartment looking at Darcy, at the bruises around her throat, and she says _Please don’t leave, Foggy, don’t leave, I couldn’t handle it if you leave, you can’t_ and he’ll lie if you ask him about this later but yeah, he fucking cried, do you have a problem with that?)

Which is not to say they exclude him, because they never, ever do. He doubts they even notice it, especially for the first year. And then the second. The third, even. Like he says, it’s very subtle unless you know both of them, until it’s very, very un-subtle, and it feels like a yawning hole in the ground between the three of them, all on different sides. But Foggy’s the only one who’s aware of it, which is…not fun. There are girls (and guys) who come around asking after Matt and guys (and girls) who come around asking after Darcy and none of them really act as if they see what Foggy sees, that _something_ is there even if no one talks about it, and sometimes he wonders if he’s imagining it all. And then Darcy will do something like kiss Matt's cheek without warning, or Matt will let her lean into him when she’s tired or drunk or even for no particular reason, just because she wants to, and there is _no way_ this is his imagination, okay, this is a _thing_.

(The betting circle is totally an accident, though. It’s maybe— _maybe_ —sophomore year of undergrad, and Foggy, Matt, and Darcy head for Jen’s, because there’s no place to study in the library, and Darcy has laundry to do anyway and no quarters to manage it. At about two in the morning, Darcy just gives up and falls asleep with her head on Matt’s knee, and Matt—who does it so unthinkingly that Foggy wants to beat him around the head with a stick—sets his hand to Darcy’s head and tugs his fingers through her hair while she sleeps, in a rhythm close to her breathing, using his other hand to press his earbud closer in so he can hear his textbook better. _He_ falls asleep about an hour after that, not moving—“You know she’ll kill me if I wake her, Foggy”—and Foggy turns out the light and drags all his shit into the kitchen, shutting the door to the living room behind him.

Jen’s still awake, making pancakes at three am, which, yeah. Foggy really appreciates Jen Walters, because she has hella life skills, and also because she just—she has all her shit together, and it’s actually really impressively amazing. Mostly, right now, he appreciates the pancakes.

“They’re asleep,” he says, when Jen cocks an eyebrow at him. “I didn’t want to wake them.”

Jen hums, hands him the spatula, and then vanishes in the direction of the living room for a minute or two. When she comes back, she’s dusting her hands like she’s just accomplished some kind of level-up.

“Blankets,” she says, when he blinks at her. And then: “They really think nothing is going on, don’t they?”

Foggy blinks at her, once, twice. Because _can it be_ — “What do you mean?”

Jen lifts both her eyebrows, this time. “Darcy. And Matthew. You haven’t noticed it, either?”

“Oh, you mean that thing that they do when they think they’re platonic?” He flips a pancake. “I mean, yeah, but what can you do?”

The look on Jen’s face is priceless, and yeah, knowing that he’s not crazy? Kind of super reassuring. To say the least.

Slowly the circle expands—not just Jen and Foggy, but Marci, even if it’s only once; Brett; Mrs. Hseng; Kate Bishop; Karen; their coffee suppliers at Mug Shots; it’s pretty ridiculous. There’s a Facebook group, even. Kate’s the one who started that one, but he will say that the membership bounced higher than he expected, in the few weeks that it ran. Which, again, just goes to prove— _he is not crazy_.)  

Even when Elektra becomes a thing (and Matt draws away from them for a while, not necessarily in an _I no longer want to know you_ way, but in a way that can’t be defined by either of them until they learn about Stick, about Matt, about Elektra and the things they would get up to in the middle of the night) Darcy doesn’t seem to particularly notice. She genuinely likes Elektra (which Foggy can’t really get behind, because yeah, Elektra’s cool, but she’s cool in the way that red-bellied black snakes or black widow spiders are cool; beautiful and poisonous) but sometimes when she thinks no one’s looking she’ll stare off out a window or into her textbook and there’s this expression, like she’s having phantom limb pains. She never says anything about it, and Foggy never asks, but those looks go away after Elektra’s fallout, after they mop Matt up out of the crater and start to put things back together.

Things stay that way until senior year. One morning Foggy slinks back into the room feeling extraordinarily pleased with himself (Marci is terrifying, but it’s in a way that is horrifically arousing rather than please-God-get-away-from-me scary) to find Matt sitting at the end of his bed with his legs crossed, focused on nothing. He’s usually focused on nothing, but this is actually _focus_ , like he’s thinking very hard about something and it’s making his brain hurt. Foggy blinks. “Dude. You okay?”

“Hm?” Matt lifts his head. “Yeah, no. I’m fine.”

Which is so much bullshit he can’t even. Foggy dumps his bag just inside the door, and takes stock. He’d left Darcy in here last night, and there’s the evidence that she stayed over in the clothes bundled up at the head of his bed. Her water bottle (she’s the only one of them that actually _uses_ water bottles and she always forgets the fucking thing, dammit, it’s so weird having people in here with a random-ass _Little Mermaid_ water bottle sitting around—) _should_ be on Foggy’s bedside table, but it’s not. It’s on Matt’s.

….wait a minute.

“Holy shit,” Foggy says, and Matt’s shoulders hitch up around his ears.

“What?”

“What happened?”

Wrong question. Matt curls into himself the way he always does when he doesn’t want to answer something, not physically, but emotionally. “What do you mean, what happened?”

“Uh, the fact that you look like you were just kicked in the face and Darcy’s shit is on your side of the room?” His stomach bottoms out. “Wait, holy shit, did you guys have sex?”

Matt actually looks like he wants to die. “ _Oh my God._ ”

“It’s a valid question! I feel like as someone who has to deal with both of you on a daily basis I should know these things so I can keep myself from getting caught up in all of that, though please, God, _please_ say you didn’t because that would be so—I don’t even know—”    

“No, Foggy, Christ.” He covers his face with one hand, scuffs it through his hair. Foggy shuts up immediately, because that’s not—that’s not a face Matt should be making right now if he was completely freaked out by the idea. “No, it was just—nothing happened. God, why would you even _think_ that?”

Foggy opens his mouth, and then closes it again. It doesn’t sound like Matt’s asking him, Foggy, anything. It sounds like he’s talking to himself. And there are rings under his eyes like he hasn’t slept, and even if nothing actually happened (Foggy doubts that, but whatever) there’s a hint of—of something close to longing about the way he says it, how he curves away from the question, glancing and retreating. And so Foggy nearly says, _Um, because of the obvious?_ Because even if it wasn’t ever obvious to anyone else, it’s been obvious to him: the way they act around each other; the way that sometimes when Darcy’s making snide comments about sexism and political corruption Matt gets this quirk to his mouth that Foggy never sees anywhere else; how Darcy just moves around him, not like she’s claiming, but like he’s an extension of her own physical presence. How they each act like the other is _theirs,_ but neither one of them realizes it, because of how _absolutely ridiculous they are_.

He thinks about saying all of that. He thinks about it, but he doesn’t, because Matt’s also suddenly, indescribably fragile, and if he pushes this right now, he might break something—in Matt, maybe; in the three of them; in him—beyond repair.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m kinda hungover and sex-stupid right now. Did I tell you about Marci?”

Matt’s shoulders stay up near his ears for the next hour and a half, all through the dissection, but by the time Foggy gets back from showering the club smoke out of his hair, he’s relaxed enough to change clothes and start working on homework, so that’s a thing.

Still, after that, he’s eighty-five percent certain (only eighty-five percent because if he gets that last fifteen percent confirmation, there could be some really awkward consequences—namely, the fact that the trio will become a Matt-and-Darcy duo with Foggy tagging along behind; he is by no means in favor of this) that Matt, at least, has pulled his head out of his ass. After the Battle of New York and they all start their 1L year, Matt starts doing this thing where he’ll lean into Darcy’s space. He never really initiates anything, but he kind of like—he puts himself in her way, like he’s looking for her attention. Darcy doesn’t really notice, or Foggy thinks she doesn’t, but more and more often he’ll find them sitting way too close, or Matt will kind of be standing just near enough to look like something’s happening, when it isn’t, and God, the number of times he catches Matt with his fingers resting ever-so-lightly on the small of Darcy’s back—let’s just say it’s the whole _if I had a dollar_ thing going on.

Darcy, though—Darcy’s either known about it the whole time, and isn’t doing a damn thing about it, or is actually _so criminally dense_ that she doesn’t realize that a) their best friend is completely in love with her and will _never say anything about it_ because he’s Catholic (probably); b) that she (and Foggy’s only at about sixty-five or seventy percent on this one, because again, Darcy is just that good at hiding things) is trapped in the same circumstance and isn’t saying anything because she’s Darcy; and c) really, if they just spent five minutes talking about things, everything would work out a lot easier.

(He’d lose money if they did that, though. He has a bet for the end of law school. So he doesn’t shove them into a basement and lock them inside with a list of demands. But only by the skin of his teeth.)

He’s pretty sure it’s the latter option (and all its ensuing subtopics) just because 1L passes. So does Eduardo. (It was Foggy’s idea to plaster the bastard’s car with off-color bumper stickers, but Matt had taken to it with a sort of viciousness that just adds fuel to the suspicion fire.) As they get older, he starts catching Darcy staring off into space with that phantom limb look again, especially when she goes to intern at Day By Day and doesn’t see them as often. But she still acts (and at this point, Foggy’s convinced that she’s doing it on purpose, wading so deep in denial that she can’t actually find her way back to shore again) as if they all have the same kind of relationship that they had before, that Matt doesn’t sometimes have this _look_ on his face (which Darcy never, ever sees, because Matt’s careful as fuck, but sometimes he forgets Foggy’s there, or just doesn’t care) like he thinks she’s—like she’s the universe in all its black holes and nebulas, that he doesn’t do that not-watching thing with her, that she doesn’t go above and beyond (so far beyond) anything she would have to do even as a best friend to make sure that Matt is okay, and God, she’s _so fucking stupid_ sometimes, he wants to smack her.

(This particularly sappy train of thought comes after he and Marci break up, so he’s drinking more than usual, and prone to poetry. Please do not ridicule him.)

Then they’ve graduated, the bar exam is behind them, they’re finding a place and founding a practice and it’s all settled back into the old rhythms, pushing and pulling and Foggy watching them spiral around each other like meteors (don’t judge him for space metaphors, either, space is actually the shit). It seems like nothing’s ever going to change (until it does) and they’re never going to find catharsis (until they do) and he has no idea what to do about it.

(They fight, and he’s never seen them fight before, not ever like this, and the fear that lances through him in that moment is actually astounding, more than anything he’s ever felt before, really, because if Darcy and Matt are fighting, then the trio is falling apart even without anything happening, and does that mean all these years he’s held his tongue in an effort to keep the peace, to let them work it out themselves, has all just been wasted time—)

( _I love you, okay? I need you to remember that. You’re my best friend, you’re like my brother, and I really, really need you to trust me—_ )

( _I thought I knew who you were, but apparently I don’t know a damn thing—_ )

(— _I didn’t drag her into this anymore than I dragged myself_ —)

(“You say that like you haven’t been in love with her for years,” Foggy snaps at him, and it’s _finally_ said, it’s finally in the air between them, and he hopes to God that Darcy can’t hear them through the shower and her music, because Matt jerks like he’s just been stabbed in the stomach—again, again, stabbed in the stomach _again_ —and blinks. He doesn’t even try to deny it. He just licks his lips and says nothing, and Foggy’s so disgusted and furious and horrified and betrayed that he says, “God fucking dammit, Matt, you need her so much that you don’t even think about what pulling her into this could _do_ , to her and you—”

 _That_ gets a reaction. Matt goes stiff and bony and uncomfortable, pressing his mouth so thin that it's almost invisible. “I haven’t thought about anything else since this started," he says, "you have _no idea_ , Foggy—”

“—and for Christ’s sake, you’re _taking advantage of her_!”

All the blood left in Matt's face drains out. He's dead-white, corpse-white, and Christ, as soon as he says it, Foggy wishes he could take it back. He can't say it, but he does. It's done, though. He leaves Matt’s apartment and doesn’t return until there’s no other choice.)  

Foggy doesn’t really realize until he’s not speaking to one of them and hanging on tenterhooks with the other that they’re a part of him. It’s not like they’re a part of each other, it’s not that sort of thing—he’d honestly rather spend a night throwing up than kiss Darcy, and though Matt is very pretty, he’s just… _no_ —but it’s similar. They’re his best friends. He’s not sure what he is, really, without them. They’re wrapped up together, _Nelson, Murdock, and Lewis_ , and not having them at his back is like walking around with no legs. But even with that, he can’t change the fact that they lied to him, that they _both_ lied to him, and this is exactly what he was afraid of, that someday they’d break apart because of a secret between Matt and Darcy. This wasn’t exactly the sort of secret he was thinking it would be, but it’s still a secret, and it’s horrifying, and he feels just like he imagined he would feel, as if someone’s cut him open and exchanged all his organs for acid. And in a way it’s worse, because with Darcy and Matt and Matt-and-Darcy he could at least understand why they’d draw away from him. With the devil and Lilith—he doesn’t understand that at all. Not any of it. Not a single part. 

( _—but to him, it’s more important to keep us safe than it is to—to realize that we’d want the same thing for him._ )

(— _I’m not doing this just because—just because it’s Matt, or because of how I feel about Matt_ —and his heart stops in that moment because she actually admitted it, she _actually admitted it_ and he can’t believe that she did it so casually, there should be a fucking parade right now or something— _which, shut up, don’t even start. I’m doing this because I want to do this. Because I need to be involved in this. Matt’s just helping me do it._ )

And apparently his two best friends are both lawyer vigilantes, and Foggy just can’t even anymore. People nearly die, again; Fisk nearly wins, again; there’s blood and tears and panic, again; and he can see it, even before Darcy says _I think me and Matt are kind of a thing,_ in the way that Matt moves when he clambers in through the window, nearly stumbling, desperate, and how Darcy gets this blazing look of absolute relief and terror as she flings herself into him, and there it is, his proof, and it doesn't sting the way it ought to. It's just what's always been going on, drawn up to the surface, finally real.

He still can't think of what to say for another few days, though. It's only after things have settled down, and they're clustered in Claire Temple's living room (and Hottie McBurnerPhone is, indeed, _Hottie McBurnerPhone_ , like damn) that he finally gets up the guts to manage a squeaky, “Matt, can I talk to you? Outside.” As soon as he says it he wishes he'd waited, because he can see the hope in Karen’s face and the joy in Darcy’s, both of them quickly stifled. Matt tails after him out the door, hands in his pockets, dipping his head so Foggy can’t get a glimpse of his expression. As soon as they’re down the hall, far enough away that they can’t be heard, Foggy says, “I don’t understand a fucking thing that you two do, but you do it, and you’re my best friends. Even with all of this. So I’m—I’m down to stop ignoring each other if you are.”

Matt freezes. Then he lets out a breath. There’s a weird pinch to the corner of his mouth that means _doesn’t dare hope because oops, too Catholic_ , and it makes Foggy’s chest kind of tight. “You don’t have to say that just because of everything that’s going on.”

“I’m serious, you asshole.” Foggy scowls at him. “This is me saying that in spite of your _completely irresponsible and totally insane_ side-job, I am willing to keep spending time with you, because you’re my best friend. This is not me admitting I was wrong, but—you know. Besides, I think Karen’s about to bash our heads together and say _deal with it_.”

“Or Darcy,” Matt adds, and Foggy snorts in spite of himself.

“Or Darcy.”

Foggy rocks back and forth on his feet. “So yeah. I have no clue what the fuck you do, and I don’t know that I even want to know, really, unless—unless it’s really bad, like this is. But I don’t—want to fight anymore.”

Matt’s lips twitch, and then fade out into a line again, like he doesn’t dare smile.

“Uh.” He rocks again. “You and Darcy are a thing now.”

The twitching stops, immediately. Matt tips his head, and it’s not a questioning look. It’s almost wary. “You’re not angry.”

“Fuck no. Why would I be angry? I’ve only been waiting for you to get your heads out of your asses for seven fucking years.” Foggy claps him hard on the shoulder, and refuses to feel guilty when Matt winces. “Really, though, it was stupid, don’t ever do shit like that again.”

“Foggy,” Matt says, as Foggy turns away to head back into the apartment. “You don’t have to worry, y’know.”

“What are you talking about?” It’s out his mouth before he remembers that yeah, uh, he can’t really brush this shit off anymore, because his best guy friend is apparently a human lie detector, and that’s…really frustrating, actually. “Worried? Why would I be worried?”

“Foggy,” Matt says again, exasperated, and everything snaps back into place. “Just because—things aren’t going to change because of this.”

Foggy blinks, and says nothing. His throat feels tight. “Well,” he says, and then loses his voice for a second. “Well. Okay, then.”

And Matt just stands there looking dumb and bruised and Catholic, so Foggy has to hug him, because for God’s sake, this idiot, and these idiots, and he can’t not love them, really. And really, he has no idea where they’d be without him.

(Or him without them. But we don’t talk about that anymore. Especially when they’re being gross.)

**Author's Note:**

> As always, my Tumblr is shu-of-the-wind.


End file.
